- Time to ban all adverts everywhere. I'm not the only one who is fed up with ads.
I don't see ads, thanks to ad blocking tech in browsers and smartphones. Any time that happens to fail and I get to endure an ad, I am amazed that regular people without ad blocking tech can endure this onslaught.
The time to negotiate a "middle ground" is long past. Let's not even entertain that idea.
An acceptable middle ground could have been designated areas for ads, which you have to seek out to see them. Think of the Yellow Pages.
Ad companies need to be reined in. They cannot control themselves. They are lobbying against all limits and controls. The only solution is to eradicate ads entirely and to make sure that anyone who gets that idea will never get it again.
- Although adverts on the fridge are absolutely terrible, is this genuine? Here's a reddit post some time before that suggesting the scenario: https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
by jamesbelchamber
9 subcomments
- We really need some legislation that outlaws this sort of control over devices we buy.
If someone wants to install an advert app on their fridge (I assume in exchange for money) then fair enough.
If I buy a tv I shouldn't just have to accept that, now or in the future, the manufacturer will sell advertising on it.
- I'm no prude, but I'm finding horror, pharma & sex ads to be incredibly disturbing in how they are presented. Google TV takes over my wall with moderately graphic horror movie ads. My family members aren't comfortable with horror and they have no way to use the TV otherwise. It's unsetting in the middle of the night. And graphic pharma ads for stomach turning skin disorders and other inappropriate disorders play even during casual, family content. And most of the sexual content is not family friendly -- even I find it awkward to have on the wall, especially when my parents visit.
These devices used to be ours with some level of control, and now they are all remotely managed to present awful content at all hours
by randyrand
6 subcomments
- Obviously made up...
This ad did the rounds last week and people were talking in the comments about this scenario.
Sure it could've happened, but odds are this is just made up.
- It's a pretty big coincidence that the thing that someone mentioned in passing about in this earlier post[1] happened to come true some days later, from a 4-day-old Reddit account.
The legal advice subreddits are, unfortunately, often the target of some creative writing exercises. I feel like this is probably one, but acknowledge we'll never know for sure.
Either way it's a terrible ad and fridges shouldn't have ads.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
by unyttigfjelltol
3 subcomments
- Manufacturers for 100 years didn’t try to wrap their fridges in ads, or tune the compressor sound to a commercial jingle. They sold mostly honest products to cool your food efficiently.
But when they add an LED display and Internet connection, suddenly they forget about cooling your food and impulsively add a bunch of adversarial functionality, meaning functions that monetize the consumer rather than keeping the food cool.
It’s like the Internet advertising ecosystem is a virus intent on infecting anything and anyone with an Internet connection, making them do bizarre customer-hostile things they never would have done otherwise.
by kyledrake
1 subcomments
- I inherited a Samsung fridge when I moved to a new place, it was a terrible fridge with serious mechanical flaws. The deicer broke, causing a constant stream of leaking water in the fridge. The French door middle component hinge was cheap plastic that broke and I had to replace it, then it broke again and I had to replace it again, then it broke again. I finally gave up and replaced the fridge.
Recommendation threads on Reddit usually begin with "anything but Samsung". They seem designed to be made cheap and hit the lowest price point with consumers that don't want to spend a lot more on something they don't really care about, so I'm not surprised to learn that ads are a part of their strategy.
But also, why do fridges need to connect to the internet?
by GCUMstlyHarmls
1 subcomments
- I read [Unauthorized Bread (exerpt) by Doctoro](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...) this year which was pretty approachable read on the topic. Not severely interesting or mind blowing if you're already here hopefully but did make me wonder how I could sneak it into my mums reading list.
by Jordan-117
1 subcomments
- "I just saw something incredibly cool! A big floating ball that lit up with every color in the rainbow, plus some new ones that were so beautiful I fell to my knees and cried."
"Was it out in front of Discount Shoe Outlet?"
"Yeah..."
"They have a college kid wear that to attract customers."
by daggersandscars
0 subcomment
- If you have a router you control, many routers allow you to take away internet access from a device while keeping it on your local network. Some (all?) Asus routers can do this from their UI.
This won’t help with devices that require 24x7 internet access, but it’s great for things you want to access the local network but don’t trust not to send info to a third party. (TVs, music amps with built in streaming, home surveillance systems [1], etc.)
Also handy for briefly turning on Internet access for software updates or one time activation.
[1] while making a surveillance system available online safely and with software you control isn’t hard, it’s not trivial. Turning Internet access off for your cameras without a plan will mean you can’t monitor your home or get alerts when away from your local network.
- I was in a car accident a few years ago that triggered my pre-existing PTSD, so it was a very rough experience. This experience was made worse by the fact that my insurer apparently sold the fact I had been in a crash to third-parties. I could not go anywhere on the internet without seeing personal injury ads, which often featured gratuitous pictures of crashes. This felt incredibly creepy and made a bad experience much worse.
- An edge case of "smart" tech...
As an aside, having scroll that thread, Reddit is a shambles. There's more deleted comments and related justification comment than actual comments. Make for a jarring experience.
- This is a fabricated story/made up post, see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
“EDIT 2: Hello, I am the original poster of the carol AD image from a month ago. I am a male from America and my name is not Carol. The story about a Schizophrenic woman named carol was most likely fabricated from the 3rd top comment on this post. Thanks!”
Fake Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1pc7999/my_s...
by Lambdanaut
2 subcomments
- As a schizotypal person, I'm unsure how more people aren't exhibiting paranoid schizophrenic symptoms in this wildly untrustworthy digital age.
Yesterday a good friend reached out to me on a new phone number to wish me happy holidays, she shortly afterwards asked me to donate to a fund to help her sick cat.
Even though this person had a similar typing style, the unrecognized phone number made me feel paranoid that it may be an LLM attempting to get money from me in an automated scam, so I made the choice to call my friend to get more evidence via voice.
It turned out to be my friend(or an even more elaborate ruse using voice capture and mass data-mining tech, but that seemed extremely unlikely, at least for another couple years).
My brother had full on shizpphrenia, and would often call family members asking them to provide evidence that they are who they say they are and not government robots. It was an obvious delusion when he was alive, but now that we're in a world where that sort of evidence-gathering is no longer extreme, paranoia is the new normal.
Our usual safeguards of identity are breaking down, and you can bet that large corporations with an eye on the coin are going to swoop in to establish new, more secure methods of identification.
- I know this is the sort of story HN would love to be true (and to be clear, I think ads on appliances are Black Mirror level stuff), but this — like most things on Reddit — is made up. [1]
This story, while fun to discuss, should be flagged, and not on the FP of HN.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46171868
- I don't understand why people willingly pay thousands for these fridges. Just buy a regular fridge without the screen.
by replwoacause
0 subcomment
- This is fake and based on this earlier post to Reddit. Someone just karma farming
https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/s/FzGerVEUM8
by yokoprime
1 subcomments
- If there is one appliance in my house that does not need a LCD screen and «smart» features, it’s my fridge. It was installed maybe 6 years ago, I adjusted some temperature settings and I’ve never touched the dials again.
- I knew using ad blockers is good for your mental health but this is plain creepy and unfair. Especially when advertisers know more and more about you as more and more everyday items are spying on you and serve you ads without any additional core functionality. Appliances don't get better, they are getting creepier to increase the return of investment for the manufacturers. The schizophrenics are just more sensitive to this enshittification of everyday items because they are quick to assume deliberate agency in chaotic events where there is none. But this is changing, for everybody.
The problem is today you can't really tell anymore whether this "Carol" the ad was addressing is the advertiser knowing that it's your name or just a random "clever" reference to a character in the TV show, I mean even after getting the resolution that it's the latter, nobody can be sure if this excludes the former, like the algorithm decided to send Carol an ad about a show with a Carol in it. It's not good to have to make up your mind about it even when you are not suffering from schizophrenia.
It's annoying, it's intrusive, it wastes your time and ruins your day. And it makes you hate your new tech, makes you hate tech in general, because it's a big "fuck you we can do what we want with you now" towards the customers. No wonder Luddites are making a come back, that's just self-defense.
by bfkwlfkjf
4 subcomments
- Stallman was right.
by cyberlimerence
0 subcomment
- Reads like something out of Philip K. Dick’s writing. Fridges with ads. Talking doors.
by keepamovin
0 subcomment
- If modern ad tech and future holographic display technology makes schizophrenic symptoms indistinguishable from regular waking consciousness in our Bitchun society...does that make us all crazy? or all sane?
by GaryBluto
2 subcomments
- When I first saw somebody complain about the Pluribus smart fridge ad I immediately knew something like this was going to happen. How did Apple/Samsung not think this through?
by dragonwriter
0 subcomment
- Í'm not sure we should be treating posts from Fun-Blueberry-2147 on r/LegalAdviceUK as actual news items.
- I know this isn’t Just a Samsung problem, but it’s sure not Not a Samsung problem either. Samsung’s taken the early-00’s Sony crown of most anti-consumer company out there - don’t buy Samsung.
by beedeebeedee
0 subcomment
- These companies have no decency. Putting ads on a fridge! They’ve already invaded our phones and computers, and almost everywhere else. This needs to stop
by saltysalt
2 subcomments
- Everyday we take one step closer to a PKD envisioned future.
- This is obviously reddit fiction.
- The actual ad: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/s/YD4vBNXfLY
Too bad for the backslash, it’s a great show.
- At least the fridge didn't play the video version.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rzmFNVBIfCQ
by randomNumber7
1 subcomments
- I recently downloaded an app to use my smartphone screen as a reading light.
So a simple app that lets you control the color and brightness of the screen.
You only find this with adds on the play store and it shares your data with 3. parties as well as permanently showing an add banner.
This isn't progress, it's broken.
by offmycloud
0 subcomment
- Reddit used to be free for anyone to view without logging in, but now I get "Your request has been blocked due to a network policy." Sorry, but I'm not turning my ad blocker off.
- Every time I see an article on HN about a "smart" device doing shitty things, my first thought is why would someone (especially from this crowd, who's supposed to be enlightened about the state of enshittification of tech) buy any IoS device in the first place ?
What good could you expect from an appliance that's permanently communicating with its non-giving a f*ck about users, profit driven, immoral and unethical mothership ? Would you really expect your life to be better after buying such a product ?
- I just hope the sister gets some peace and that her doctors take this as an environmental trigger
- Given what that ad said, I can hardly blame her. That must have been horrifying.
Imagine if advertisers were directly responsible for cleaning up after themselves. For newspapers, they'd need to recycle the equivelent amount of paper their ads take up in all papers distributed. For ads on digital devices, an amount of processing power equivalent to the amount used to display them all would be user for a good cause (say folding). Or even just the same amount of electrical power used could be donated to a good cause. And for incidents like this, the company would be directly liable and bound to clean up.
Or we could just ban them and also get rid of the long list of other downsides with ads.
- made an account just to note that when reddit fanfic is reaching the front-page, we might be on the downslope and it's sad
- Yeah… she’s not wrong.
If you want to put an end to this you’ll either need to boycott products, make your own, or get something serious passed to abolish a good chunk of ads. This industry is loaded with money and they reinforce their own (see: ads on fridges) so good luck. It’s a tough battle.
Oh, and there are no roadway ads in Vermont.
by lifeisstillgood
0 subcomment
- In the golden era of advertising (don’t really know but say before the iPhone)
there was no “opt-out”. If you wanted to watch Lucille Ball, rich or poor you had to sit through the ads. If you wanted to read the New York Times article, rich or poor, you had to turn the full page ad over.
Today that’s gone - you can for a fee never see an advert again. And that fee is easier to pay if you are rich, and harder if poor. And so more and more “traditional” advertising will become aggressive and aimed at both lower income audience and more scammy products (because you are selling to the poorest you cannot beat costs eventually). And advertising will stop being about “brand” (which are naturally less aggressive and focused on closing) and more about the last click to sale.
We are already seeing this world take shape, as “influencers” become the way to reach those who have paid to stop all other advertising, and why travel influencers are head of that pack.
Ultimately this is about design of our public spaces. We rightly celebrate architects, civil engineers and their sponsors who create enjoyable and beneficial built areas - we have still to get a hold of the digital public spaces. While Times Square has a quality of its own, living there permanently would have mental health issues for most of us.
And in the end, positive public spaces are associated with the words paternalism, socialism, public good and none with Toll, extraction, rentierism.
The arguments against ads are arguments for paternalism of government control for a better life for us all.
- I wish ads were allowed to only state facts, and that in a non-misleading context.
by SideburnsOfDoom
0 subcomment
- FYI, the slogan ""WE'RE SORRY WE UPSET YOU, CAROL" on a yellow background is from the Apple TV Show "Pluribus" (Or "PLUR1BUS"). It would be an ad for that show. It is indeed creepy at times.
The main character is called "Carol". As also, it seems is the person who saw it here.
- im glad the minds here figured it to be fake as well. makes me have a little bit of hope for this world.
- Next up: <blink> tags on fridge triggers seizures
Back in the day we asked webmasters to run their web sites through Bobby for accessibility checks.
I am curious if any LLM work like this is being done. If it were really a smart fridge, it would moderate its users content appropriately. Eg I don’t want haram ads, don’t freak me out, I’m color blind.
- I love technology but avoid all the smart stuff because it's all shit, all spyware, all will eventually show ads. Its a perversion of something that could have been so nice.
I have Philips Hue lights, it started out great, now every time I open that app it slaps an ad in my face. I paid hundreds of euros for that system. Never again.
- there hasn't been a single schizophrenia diagnosis for a born blind person
- Careless people
- this post is a meme (or an attempt to shed light at the problem) referencing a video by louis rossmann who foreshadows that something like this could hypothetically happen
- Don’t buy appliances with anything but a small screen. Any large screen on any appliance will be used to show ads. If not now then eventually.
It’s also a gimmick, and gimmicks on things like appliances and cars are red flags for poor quality. Appliances in particular are best when simple and designed for their function. “Feature” means “thing that will break.”
- This story and the discussion here highlights how useful X's community notes can be
- I simply can't fathom why anyone would spend extra money on a "smart" fridge. Let alone one that shows ads. Why would you even want one of those?
- IANAL, but could the ADA [1] or equivalent laws be applied to such a situation?
If it was up to a jury, the creepy ads might not get much sympathy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
- File suit.
- the end of HN when reddit fanfic reaches the frontpage
- These targeted ads are incredibly harmful when you have to take care of someone with psychosis. They think that someone who is listening to them is sending them "messages" through ads and that feeds into paranoia. Unfortunately it is not possible to reason in such situations with the person and any attempt to explain tracking is met with hostility.
I really wish regulators stopped being corrupt, naive or both and outright made it illegal.
There is no upside for tracking of any kind for consumers.
by globular-toast
5 subcomments
- The gut reaction of too many geeks is "I can't believe you'd install a smart fridge in your home". But we need to think about this differently. Imagine if vehicles had no mandatory safety checks. How many people know anything about car safety? You'd get people barrelling down the highway with broken suspension, bald tyres or worse. We are the professionals. It's our responsibility to keep the public safe and stop shit like this happening. The software engineers who implemented this at Samsung should be struck off. Well, we could start by having something to be struck off from. I'm done with assuming individual developers will be scrupulous. We need real consequences to come from higher up. It's way past the point that this is fucking with people's lives.
- it should read, "Schizophenic correctly diagnoses societies ongoing pschcotic episode through the phenominon of refrigerator advertising"
- I, for one, welcome our new fridge overlords. Might I also remind them that I can be useful in rounding up, hoarding, if you will, other humans for fridge-related activities thanks to my 39-year experience with ice, frozen fruits, etc.
by da_grift_shift
1 subcomments
- HN baited by karma farmers once again.
Here's the /r/assholedesign post: https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/1ow6cpu/appa...
It shows a webpage with an ad being displayed in the browser app.
How do we know?
Full-screen ads don't show on the cover screen (home screen).
Here's the investigation:
https://9to5google.com/samsung-smart-fridge-ads-how-to-turn-...
>Any ad shown would be limited to the cover screen widget, which displays news, weather, and calendar events.
>The ad shown in the Reddit photo is of the fridge’s Samsung Internet app. Through that, an ad seems to have shown up organically through a third-party website.
Here's the docs that talk about ads on the cover screen:
https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS10007562/
It's easy for ragebait to short-circuit your critical thinking skills.
Don't let Redditards like /u/Shellnanigans get their fix.
by toxicplanes1
0 subcomment
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by renewiltord
4 subcomments
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